A Politician's Spiritual Opportunity | Letter #15

welcome to week number three can you believe that we're starting our third week which means we are halfway through and um tonight's letter is a letter that took a little bit of extra research in order to properly understand because the Reba is writing to an Israeli politician a fairly prominent Israeli politician but the one that I had to do a little bit of research to understand more properly what the context of the letter was and I will try to fill it in as we go and remember the letter to uh Louis Finkelstein where the rabbis said why did Rubino accomplish honor rich people and that ever was explaining because Rabino kadish had to uh guide the Jewish people during a time of Crisis and when you're guiding the Jewish people during a time of Crisis you need to be a good talent scout and you do you need to identify members of the people who have influence and you have to network with them remember that letter like uh I don't remember how long ago maybe it was probably over a week ago so this is a good example of that that ABBA is sort of developing a relationship with this politician um not necessarily because this is someone who's already an ally or at least not a strong Ally completely aligned with the devil's worldview which is similar to the the letter to Finkelstein for that matter but rather in it as as was the case of the Finkelstein letter and um many letters from that but to many people that I was writing to people who maybe you would think would be unlikely um unlikely allies but the rabbit perceives an opportunity to create a relationship and to find common ground and to expand that common ground and that itself before we get into the particulars of this letter I think that itself is an incredible teaching and an instruction for all of us that there's no sense preaching to the choir as we say maybe even you can also preach to the choir I'll redact that but um in addition to preaching to the choir um you don't have to only talk to people who already agree with you uh internet bubble anyone yeah search engine Echo chamber anyone in 2023 people is it what is it yeah it is 2023. people are indignant that other people could have different opinions than them and they get really upset about that that's it he posted such and such on his Facebook which is against my politics he's an idiot and I have nothing to do with him anymore right well let's learn from it find common ground with people and expand on that Common Ground okay it's a common theme in the lab is life and that is correspondences and that of his teachings and that have his example let's read the letter tonight okay touching your test Brooklyn New York do you know what the 13th of the second other is um it is Thai disaster at least in a regular year it is unless Purim comes out in matashabis in that case uh the day before porm is Shabba so you don't fast in Shabbos but in most years you'd gimmel other base is uh China zester it's a fast investor so this is one that ever wrote this letter the faster foreign who is Eliezer livner or liebenstein was born in Poland in Lodge Poland and um was an early immigrant during the pre-state zionistic uh immigration to the Holy Land and he was actually part of the hagana and he was aligned with that kind of political uh group he became affiliated with the mapai party that's ben-gurion's party the very leftist uh originally extremely dominant perhaps even we could say they had a monopoly on political power in the state so he he was from that background um he was from that those those were his friends those were his peers in addition to being a politician he was uh and I should mention that he was an MK he was a member of knesset in the very first knesset meaning right after the Declaration of Independence in and um at the time of that I was writing to him here in 1959 he doesn't hold an official seat but he's still very active as a politician and he was also a writer in fact even before 48 he was known for being a newspaper editor and apparently he was a good speaker as well and just an influential person and like I said he came from that background maybe I should fill in just a little bit more um so Ben Gurion was the first rosham the first prime minister of Israel and he came from a very specific type of demographic which I would say dominated Israeli politics for sure for the first 20 years of the state and that was I'll just say it bluntly Eastern European ashkenazic ular leftist um almost I don't even know if I should say almost but anti-religious um thinkers intellectuals uh though that was that was the ilk the dominated politics in the in the early state um the truth is it wasn't really until Bagan won the election 20 years after 30 years I'm sorry 30 years after the founding of the state that um that absolute dominance almost Monopoly on power that Ben gurion's Party in My Pie had over uh State politics so I want to explain to you that live now was part of that group but he was sort of kind of like a fringe within that group so what I'm saying to you is he wasn't the type of person that you would automatically say oh he's going to be sympathetic to the agenda that the debit wants to pursue he wasn't religious at all he came from that same background that same party those same leanings is Ben Gurion um but the Rebus saw in him a slight let's say opening of the door and that ever seized it now I should also tell you that when the devil wrote to him on tyness Esther touching your tests that was the second time that I wrote to him the first time was a year previously livna had sent the Rebus some articles that he wrote I mentioned to you that he was a he was a very uh gifted author so he had sent the Deborah some articles and that ever responded regarding the articles so now this second letter is not in response at least not in a direct response to a letter from livnet you know most of these letters will begin this is a bit like the standard way that most of these letters will will begin that I was saying like I'm answering your letter and then I will say the date um when he received the letter so here it doesn't start that way because the lab is not directly responding to a correspondence um that is um well he's going to say why he's all of a sudden reaching out that I was going to say right now he's while he's reaching out uh greetings and blessings so so whatever says it it reached my hand and it came to me while potatoes and according to say this I'm laughing because that I've always grabs an opportunity to teach this this guy wasn't religious I don't know if he was interested in learning say this or not but whatever puts it right in there right in the beginning and according to see this nothing isn't nothing is accidental everything is Divine Providence so the number puts that in like that little my middle musker that little parenthetical phrase so the dev is basically explaining the words nism means it happened but nothing just happens so the dev is like I happen to receive but nothing just happens on accident everything of course is divinely orchestrated what did I receive ETI a uh an excerpt from a newspaper article isai it says that you're gonna organize or you are organizing a group of people who are like-minded who have similar Outlook a similar Outlook as you doim regarding essential changes in the field of finances or economics livner was involved like I said he wasn't actively uh holding a seat at that point but he was still very involved in politics and he was still officially very much aligned with mapai but from within the party he was attempting to make some changes from within um that would somewhat shake things up and shift some of the policies away from what they had been they had been a very hard line leftist a socialist approach and at least in economic matters livner wanted to shift away from that so here's where the Debussy is sort of like the opportunity for something more okay that Eva mentions also that in that newspaper article or the excerpt of the newspaper article that that ever read it mentions another details a that in this group it was by the way it had a name it was called the mishtara hadash and uh it wasn't like a party but it was uh sounds to me more like a movement within a party So within that group Das orthodoxim there are many religious Orthodox members okay so livner is making a shift away from the the more established party line and he's starting a movement or a group to address some changes in economics the the economic policy at that time was very very um socialist that did not change until until Pagan uh was elected to office which was 20 years almost 20 years after this letter okay so the Deb is saying I heard that or I saw that in a newspaper article I see that there's some from guys who are also part of this okay so let's see now that episode in general in life when you start to make a change in one area of public policy and influence it's much easier than for the person to add another new thing to make other changes in his Outlook okay you see where the Deb is going that I was saying you're starting something new you're making a little bit of a of a shake-up in the establishment that they should deviate from where the party line had been before so the devil says hey you know it's possible that while you're shaking up one area of people's world view you can shake up other areas of their worldview as well and in other words if we're if we're into change right now for into things that are new right now so uh maybe this is an opening to to add some more new stuff now compounding this together with this so first of all There's an opportunity because things are changing anyway an additional aspect here uh I don't know forgive my ignorance of modern Hebrew maybe a real erudite Israeli speaker can tell me if hash boss gamely word but if you can tell me if gamelin uh maybe I could have Googled that probably should have but tell me if that's an idiom if that is a an expression or if the rabbit is creating that term basically it means the law of reciprocity it means that things flow in a dynamic back and forth so and ended up it says this law he calls it a law predominates in the world it's sort of it's sort of just one of the one of the many rules that the Creator embedded in the universe that's just how it works that when there's influence going it sort of gets bounced back that's how I'm describing this gamelim okay so since that's the situation how do I mean since that's the law that's the way the world works so for sure it's applicable also in this situation what am I talking about I'm talking about the opportunity for some of these religious members of your group to have an influence on the organization and its policies and and uh did just the organization in general and on the other people in the organization and specifically what I mean is that they should have an influence regarding our religion Arturo and its mitzvahs in other words these guys joined the group okay so you sort of brought them in and gave them uh a platform but what's going to happen is it's just inevitable this is the way things work is just like you gave them this position they're going to give back and they have now an an opportunity to influence the other members and the the Gen the the the organization in general and what I'm saying is maybe this new organization can have a little bit more of a religious tone to it uh or or even just a religiously sympathetic tone or maybe even you could say as opposed to my Pie's history it could at least just be a little less hostile against religion that's that's what the devil seems to be saying here that you're shaking things up anyway you're you have a few religious guys in this new group as well it would be an opportunity to sort of adjust things and to get people to maybe be a little bit more aligned with traditional Torah values that's what the dev is saying so you see that is seizing an opportunity here um should I be like Paul Harvey and tell you the rest of the story I mean we're still in the middle of the we're still in the middle of the the letter um I'll just finish this paragraph and then I'll tell you the rest of the story Thomas says I love this there's always room for improvement in this area you know why I love it there's probably other reasons to love it that I'm not thinking of I love it because it's not like the dev is saying oh you you're not religious you need to improve you need to become more religious no that was saying there's always room for improvement in this area if you were the chief Rabbi I would encourage you to strengthen in your personal observance and your influence on other people's personal observance I mean there's always room for improvement when it comes to being more aligned with uh with Torah so I like that for that reason okay so anyways the rest of the story is um you know this live net was not religious and to my knowledge he never became religious but um and his party never became religious in the organization itself was not religious but there was a softening at least on his part personally and he had not only a sympathetic View of Yiddish kite but later on when things became even more difficult to do so when meaning when there was even greater pressure he stood up and he took the side of yiddishkite um in touch and lamid so we're talking about 11 years after this letter um that I've made some comments about Miu yehudi about the law of return and about who is a Jew and defining Jewish identity and it was taken as a controversial statement and uh we're going to speak a little bit more about mihu yehudi here in this letter but mihu yehudi I'll explain a little bit more was not such a hot button issue in this in 1959 as it became uh in the coming years I will talk about about that a little bit because the devil mentions at the end of the letter but when the mihu yehudi issue was becoming extremely um contentious uh there was a big pushback against statements that I've had made and in fact there was an article in and it said that because of the devil's position on mio yehudi that we should prevent uh the rabbit is moved to film the film Campaign which of course we know that ever started on the eve of the Six Day War in 1967 the initiative of going around and offering every Jewish man and boy above Bar Mitzvah the opportunity to put on philan as often as possible on every weekday all days including excluding Shabbos and yomtev um and uh so apparently the the pushback was that since the deba said something that the establishment didn't like so now we should thwart his villain campaign as well so Olivia got up and again I mentioned he was a gifted writer so this is very important he used his pen and he wrote an article defending the rebe and defending with Philip and the devil responded to it directly wrote him another letter and told him it was very interesting that I just said first of all you should know personally it's rare that the devil would give glimpses into his personal life but he says I grew up as the rabbi as the son of the rabbi of Jacob in in uh in in Russia in Ukraine and during the really heavy uh days of the stalinous depression so it was uh not it was not so uh it was not so easy to be Jewish then and uh he said my you know my father was was a target of the of the government so he says I I know what pressure I know what pressure is all about right so he says um says I wasn't really so bothered by the the attacks and the pressure but why does villain have to be the the the the victim here it's villain why why is philan guilty why does there have to be less filling you know they would want to come after me okay come after me but why why are you punishing villain so he think livner for standing up for thrilling and making sure that the mitza would continue okay so that's that's the rest of the story that's where this relationship goes but let's let's continue the letter so you as the organizer of this group by the way I think that he left that group a year later so it wasn't necessarily that it wasn't the specific issue that that was writing to him about didn't necessarily materialize in an obvious way but it planted seeds which one of those seeds sprouted in a way that we know about which I just told you about a minute earlier and who knows how many other ways that it sprouted we're talking about a very influential person who was in the halls of power and spoke to all of the top people so whatever influence that ever had on him I'm sure had an effect that there would be absolutely no way of us to actually measure in any quantifiable way so you as the organizer of this group according to the newspaper article you're the guy you're like the main initiator You're The Advocate you're the guy who came up with it foreign maybe you can be like the initiator and you can get up and you can announce meaning that I was saying it's not like you're just invited to the party it's your party you know you can do whatever you want over there you started the whole thing so you could be the guy who gets up and announces it is essential that we return to the sources and I love this poetry here to return to the sources which are old new eternal sort of a beautiful expression there the old new Eternal it's a paradox it's both Timeless And Timely you can meme that if you want send me uh your likes all right um remember he was starting a whole new thing that was his thing his whole thing was called the new party or the new organization that that's what he actually called it so that I was saying okay new is good but the new old eternal so meaning it's funny you can make you can truly be Progressive do something new and shake things up and and introduce Innovation how by returning to are our tradition okay which is both ancient obviously has that that Advantage but it's also absolutely relevant in today's day and age I should tell you also the letter the next letter that ever writes to live now there's a great line in there where the Nevis says about Toyota has to be practical Toyota has to be actionable and it actually says their hamisa which is something that never said publicly thousands of times the main thing is is action so the devil points out that you know in in Yiddish kite we have philosophy the deepest philosophy and we also have halaja which is a guide for day-to-day practice so the devil says look at the I said I said dubidus look at the Ten Commandments themselves it starts with aniki it starts with the proclamation of of monotheism which is the deepest of the deep philosophy theology but it ends with things like don't kill don't steal don't covet like really day-to-day stuff really pedestrian uh issues that people deal with oh that actually uses an English word there it doesn't use it doesn't write it in English she writes it it's one of those modern Hebrew words which is actually an English word that ever used the word Instinct team instincts that so the The Ten Commandments starts with talking about the loftiest spiritual Proclamation I'm the Lord your God and in the end it talks about how human beings have to deal with reigning in their instincts with their most basic animalistic instincts well found that to be fascinating okay and what is the old new Eternal uh Source it is the Torah that maishirobeno got from from Sinai and all of its mitzvasi dafke and in a practical way specifically meaning an action not just the ideas um yeah whatever says it here as well the mice is the the main thing foreign only action is the true indicator of any ideology in any person you want to see what an ideology really is don't tell me what it means on paper show me what it does you want to tell me who A person is don't tell me what the person teaches what they say show me how they live that's the only available that's our only indication of what something really is ubisignan and in the language of the Magilla which we're going to read in a few hours remember I told you that I was writing on Tinus Ester it's literally a few hours before the night mcgilla reading so the devil says in the words of that mcgiller that we're about to read um who knows if it was for a moment just like this that you ascended to the government to the in this case in the megillah means the kingship speaking to Esther that's why it's in the feminine um so why did you become Queen why did you why were you installed into the palace perhaps just for this reason Esther so that you could save your people and whatever takes those words that were said to Esther and he says them to Eliezer livnir and says maybe the whole reason why you are a powerful guy and that you're on the inside and that you're uh connected in Israeli politics is just for this moment so you can stand up and tell this new group guys you know what we're making some changes anyways in economic policy I think it's time to soften our approach about being against religion to the contrary maybe we need to draw some inspiration and some guidance from uh from our tradition so that's what the dev is telling him with uh Steam and blessing and you should report good news and everything we said and you should have a purm besaider I like that usually we say you know happy poor but here's like you know beside that what does it means zeissomatis that means like the Magilla says that the Jews won the Jews won meaning this should be a victory everything you're doing should be a victory for for real Yiddish kite now before I read this last part which almost reads like a PS because that I've already wished him a happy poem or a porn besider I just want to give you a little bit of context um I mentioned Miu yehudi earlier at this point Miu yehudi was not the huge hot button issue that it would become later and I'll explain to you why it wasn't yet but how it was starting to cook up and that's why the dev is referencing it here in this letter Ben Gurion had a son who was hospitalized in a British military hospital he was injured while fighting and uh he met an English nurse and they married and this became obviously an issue not just for Ben Gurion as a private individual but then as a representative of the Jewish people so uh long story short at the end of 1958 Ben-Gurion started writing letters to Jewish leaders of all types and of all backgrounds all over the world um asking how to define who was a Jew regarding the the law of return regarding who is given citizenship in the new state of Israel and ben-gorian wrote 51 thinkers of all levels of religious observance and all different types of political Persuasions he received 46 responses to his to his 51 letters and of the 46 responses 38 of them including the response of the Rabe told him unequivocally that Judaism should be defined the way halacha has defined it for centuries in Millennia not to introduce any Innovation into the definition of a Jew so that's why I say it was a little bit less controversial of an issue in 1958 and 1959 because the overwhelming response even from non-religious uh people was to allow the religious definition of Jewish identity to stand meaning only one who was born from a Jewish mother or has a halachic conversion and that's why the issue sort of rested so to speak relatively speaking uh after that point it became much more controversial again later okay but here was the beginning of that contention the Debbie's response actually um was a month earlier a month prior to this letter that of his response to Ben Gordon is from your tests so it's a month and five days because this is other base so the bengurion letter was adirshine um that's that's the the background okay so let's read this a series um is kind of an idiomatic phrase there are many and some also very unusual among them some unusual perusem commentaries Le megilisaster to the biblical Book of Esther okay there are many many many commentaries to the biblical Book of Esther avoid but they all say the same thing regarding this regarding what egg although homin said to annihilate the Jews and Mordechai wanted to do the exact opposite save the Jews but how many Mordechai agreed on one thing as well as in the entire generation everyone agreed will a light cell shall Suffic without any shade of doubt who is a Jew so the who is a Jew issue was starting to become an issue as I mentioned bengurion had just sent out those 51 letters that ever had just responded a month prior to this letter to livner and I should also tell you that remember that episode we're going to Chris mcgilla in a few hours so the next day the day of Purim there was a fabrangin is I mean officially it's the day of form but it's coming out of it's the night coming out of the day of porn Okay so we're talking about the next day that night there was the devil's poor fabrengan you remember a few letters ago we talked about the Reba's famous poem for bringing of tuftshin khai of Tosh what was it nine hours is that what it was yeah so this is the next year tests I don't think it went nine hours it did not go nine hours in that fabregan it's actually the fourth Ciroc of the performance test you could look it up in Terrace and many of you will recognize that fourth Circa of Purim Tufts in your tests gimmel zacher the actual sikha was originally said on porm at this poor fabrangin but in it's a section unto itself called uh Parsha Zohar Parsha zachar is the special Torah reading we read the Shabbos before poor and it's about the obligation to destroy a Malik and the half Torah of that Shabbos tells the story of Shaw hamalak the first Jewish King and how he had an opportunity in his day to destroy a Malik completely to eradicate them and shmuelanavi prophet Samuel found out that shawl uh came up with a clever idea he said you know what I'm gonna leave the king agag to survive and I'll take him as my prisoner and uh yeah so during the hours that agog was a pow before shmuel executed him which he did he conceived a a son who became the progenitor of Haman so the whole business with Homan was because Shull didn't follow the rules and as the haftura and its commentaries explain Shaw wasn't trying to be rebellious no not at all and he wasn't even being lethargic in carrying out lacks and carrying out his his uh orders he actually had a reason he he followed reason he followed reason and he had a great argument why what he was doing made a lot of sense and that even adds their explanations while could even be argued what he was doing was a really cool thing but you know what that wasn't what he was told to do he was given very explicit orders and he didn't follow them and so many many of you may be familiar with that like I said it's uh and it's basically about the idea of don't try to outsmart Hashem and even when we have really smart ideas um we're not smarter than Infinite Wisdom and we need to have Cabela's oil and that means to submit to the Divine Authority I want to mention also because it's just something that I am passionate about in that same sir which happens to be one of my favorites actually he explains that thinking is also a part of Kabbalah soil he says because if you think that you're going to just turn off your brain and that way you'll have cobola soil he says that that's that's cheating you're not allowed to do that because cabalis oil submission to the the Divine Authority means to give Hashem all of you not just your action but your brain as well and to give Hashem your brain means that you have to be a thinking being you have to continue thinking but you have to think in the ways that are aligned with hashem's Will so yeah it'll be easier to just become a robot and never think again and then oh I have Kabbalah soil that everybody says that's not Kabbalah so cabalis oil is not only when you do hashem's will but you teach your brain you train your brain that's why we're learning egress guys that's why we're learning to have this worldview when you train your brain to think in alignment with the Holy Torah that's true Kabbalah soil Kabbalah soil has to be not just in a level of action but also emotion and intellect okay so that's that famous at the end of that and this is not included in the edited portion that's in the series is highly edited never spent a lot of time editing and re-editing the transcripts of his fabrangians to make it acceptable to him in the format this is a very different format than just a transcript of a talk they each have certain mileage there's a certain ishmaq that you can really only get when you read the original hanaka where you see the interwoven conversations and how the Deb is Flowing from one subject to another subject and even commenting on current events or commenting on things that are happening right there in the building at that moment and obviously you don't get that liquidity is more of the of the alumnus it's more of the scholarship but here's what I want to tell you if you go look up I told you the fourth from Purim tough you'll see that famous there and it's very recognizable it's very close the edited version is very close to the transcript but then at the end there's something that's not in liquidity circus and that is the Debbie says since it's poor I want to say a poem Torah poor Tita means a clever witty uh teaching that is more about the the the it's more about the humor than necessarily scholarship but if it's a true form title it also has to be the point of it has to be true yeah obviously it has to be something that's uh that aligns with Torah and it's an alliance with truth so the devil says I want to say a Purim Theta and the never says you know there was a machlaikus in the time of Purim and this is almost what the devil writes here to live near 25 24 hours earlier but the way that episode is just slightly different and uh definitely a lot funnier it never sets it up as a poor title and it is very cute and there's recordings of it by the way if uh maybe we'll post it on the WhatsApp groups if people are um you should mention uh I've mentioned before but I'm going to mention again uh 30 letters 30days.com so you go there and I believe you can sign up for the WhatsApp groups and uh you receive a lot of additional stuff that we don't have during the class like we just posted the other night an original um image of the letter that we learned we were privy to an inside source that gave us a picture of the actual letter and we post stuff like that so you should definitely join the WhatsApp and you know what I'll I'll post the audio from poemtation your test blender uh so the devil says like this in the time of Purim there was a machlaikus um it was Homan versus Mordechai Harman said that we gotta annihilate the juice and Mordechai said no like we just said earlier uh tonight at abdallah's tie in my house that now the Jews should have uh light and joy and gladness and and Glory so they they were at an impasse because they wanted very different things for the Jews however one thing that they did not debate was me who yahudi they had very different plans for the Destiny of the Jewish people opposite plans but they did not debate who the Jewish people were and what the definition of a Jew was okay so that's tonight's letter and we will see you Hashem tomorrow night